 I think that vaccines should be given at night to be the most effective. Why? Just a shot in the dark. Since the initial 7 cases in December, over 70 people in California have contracted measles because an unvaccinated carrier decided that they wanted to visit Disneyland. Needless to say, nobody's really happy about that. Fueled by the fear of resurgence of preventable Dudley diseases, many have turned anti-vaxxers into sort of punching bags for both media and social commentary. Even Fox News has started railing against anti-vaxxers as being science deniers. That's Fox News. That's not what I'm interested in here. I totally understand where anti-vaxxers are coming from. Being injected with substances that you don't fully understand, especially in an atmosphere where people are telling you that they might be harmful, is scary. Also, parents are intensely motivated to protect their kids, to feel in control of their welfare, and when the status quo of vaccination doesn't feel like they're doing enough, they'll seek out any way that they can to gain peace of mind that they're doing more than other parents. However, the prevailing scientific consensus is that vaccines are an important and necessary measure against infectious diseases. The vast majority of medical researchers assert that the most commonly cited reasons for not vaccinating are either demonstrably untrue, or reference risk factors that are considerably less risky than being unvaccinated. Vaccines weren't really controversial up until around 1998 when Andrew Wakefield raised some concerns that maybe the MMR vaccine was causing autism, concerns which were later refuted, several times over, by some very large and much better constructed studies than Wakefield ever performed. It's interesting that people would choose to believe amateur anti-vaxx theorists over trained researchers, to believe that there's some bias which extends to the overwhelming majority of medical experts which would cause them all to recommend vaccinations, despite supposedly convincing evidence of their dangers. By definition, that accusation is an accusation of conspiracy, a secret plan by a group of people to do something harmful. Whether medical experts are allegedly refusing to examine the evidence impartially, or are being intimidated into silence by their peers, anti-vaxxers are suggesting that those experts are willingly and actively suppressing the truth in favor of a harmful lie. Now, to be perfectly fair, accusations of conspiracy are sometimes accurate, from President Nixon's underhanded political activity to the Church of Scientology's infiltration of the US government. Those things actually happen. But many theories about conspiracies require a certain pattern of thinking which makes it difficult to recognize whether they're actually plausible or if the tinfoil had lizard people variety. So the question is, in order to decide whether or not to trust a particular scientific consensus, how might a discerning person decide whether an accusation of conspiracy is potentially true in deserving of further investigation, or just misguided crazy talk? What makes a bad conspiracy theory? Well, first, there's disproportionate weighting of evidence. A conspiracy isn't the only alternative to the official story, it's just one among thousands of potential explanations, each with their own degree of likelihood. In order to be worth considering, it's not enough to demonstrate one or two problems with the official story. A plausible conspiracy has to explain ALL of the evidence, including all of the evidence used in support of the official story, better than the official story does. Most bodies of scientific research have a few contradictory results. As noted in the previous episode, most modern papers acknowledge that there's a small chance that their results are an error or a fluke. As such, a theory about a conspiracy which cherry-picks evidence for its own conclusions while ignoring all contradictory evidence, or dismissing it as being a cover-up, is probably just overselling an idea that simply isn't well supported. For example, anti-vaxxers will frequently refer to anecdotal cases of vaccines having caused autism, but they won't really talk about or acknowledge the numerous rigorous scientific studies that demonstrate that there's no causal link between the two. Another commentative bogus conspiracy theories is that they posit an impossibly large number of complicit parties. That's people in the know who ought to come forward who don't for some reason. Considering the incredible lengths that governments go to to screen people for top-secret clearance, and considering the regular failures of even those rigorous systems of secrecy, the idea that thousands upon thousands of researchers and experts would all collectively keep their mouths closed about some dark secret for decades is kind of a stretch. So conspiracies have a whole lot of ground to cover before their plausible explanations for events, yet they still contain all of the drama and allure of a spy thriller while flattering their believers for being smarter than the rest of the sheeple. Compared to the boring mundane story that vaccines work exactly the way the doctors think they do, a conspiracy, or a secret that they don't want you to know, is way more exciting. But buying into that conspiracy theory and confirmation bias isn't a rational decision. It puts both the child and everybody who comes in contact with them at significantly increased risk. And the more resources that scientists have to pour into constantly reasserting accepted scientific principles in media and refuting any accusations of some sort of scientific conspiracy, the more dangerous the world those children live in becomes. After all, evolution isn't going to wait around for us to be ready for the next big disease, and it would be very helpful if we didn't also have to fight battles that we've already won. What's your favorite conspiracy theory? Is it actually plausible? Please leave a comment below and let me know what you think. Thank you very much for watching. Don't forget to blah blah subscribe, blah share, and don't stop thunking.